Principles of Desolation

by Randall N Bills

  Now Danai was interested enough to care. "All right, that would be bad." She checked her chronometer. "I'm meeting with the captain-general in forty-five minutes. If she has anything to say about Bell, I'm sure I'll hear it quickly. If not, Clara will send you word that he hasn't been caught yet. You'll need to find him. We can get you a pass off the DropPort so you can track him down before they do. In the meantime, check every comm channel you can, get people stationed by every window that's accessible to us and see if you can spot him."

  Sandra bowed quickly, then dashed out.

  Danai looked at Clara. "What do you think—is he doing something heroic or stupid?"

  "It's Bell," she said. "There's an equal chance of each. There's also a good chance he's doing something heroic and stupid."

  Danai nodded. She picked up her knife and fork and cut a very small bite of waffle. Suddenly, she wanted the meal to last a long time, and the morning meeting to never come.

  Her dread was fulfilled when she went to the meeting. She approached the door of Jessica's private office, only to be told by one of the guards standing next to it that the captain-general wished to meet Danai in the throne room today.

  "That can't be good," Danai muttered to Clara as they hurried through the palace halls.

  "Maybe she's having her office repainted today," Clara said optimistically.

  Danai's only response was a short laugh.

  The throne room, when they arrived, was more packed than Danai had ever seen it. Jessica was there, of course, with Nikol. Philip, who hadn't attended most diplomatic functions, was there today, along with a half- dozen people Danai didn't recognize and another half- dozen guards. Compared to Danai's small party—herself, Clara and Wiggins—the crowd in the throne room was impressive and daunting.

  Just because Jessica didn't appreciate our attempts to intimidate her, Danai thought, it doesn't mean she's above a little intimidation of her own.

  Three empty chairs were set up in front of Jessica's throne. Danai walked to them, but remained standing. The increased formality of the situation seemed to demand it.

  Jessica started speaking as soon as Danai stopped moving.

  "I'm certain I made the rules concerning your people quite clear," Jessica said. "I believe I even provided a detailed map explaining where they could go and when. And I am positive I explained that I would have no tolerance for any adventurism by your military personnel."

  She stopped speaking. Danai assumed she was supposed to say something.

  "Yes," she said.

  "That, then, makes last night's incident all the more intolerable. Jacyn Bell, your sergeant at arms, was arrested last night in the restricted area. He is in our custody."

  Danai kept her face expressionless, but her mind was running a long stream of curses, all of them directed at Bell.

  "What's more," Jessica continued, "he was arrested in the middle of an illegal activity. What was the charge again, Major Casson?"

  "Solicitation," a dour-faced man said with clear satisfaction.

  Dammit, Danai thought. I should have castrated Bell as a condition of him being on the command crew.

  "A good commander must control those who serve under her," Jessica said. "And with your Canopian upbringing, I had thought you would have a stronger handle on the members of the weaker sex in your command."

  Philip did not seem to appreciate the end of Jessica's remark, but he remained quiet.

  "I suggest you meet with this Bell and inform him of the full extent of the trouble he has gotten himself into," Jessica said. "And then, perhaps, you may take some time to yourself to determine why men give you such problems before we meet again."

  Danai heard the last line all too clearly. "Men," Jessica had said, not "this man." She knew something. She had to. And there was only one way she could have found it out.

  Danai kept herself from looking at Nikol, but she could feel cold poison pouring over her heart. Nikol had told Jessica. Danai had told her about Caleb, something she had only managed to tell Erde, and Nikol had promptly run to Jessica with the information. Danai's fist clenched, her nails digging into her palms, maybe drawing blood, but the pain didn't matter. The icicle in her chest had grown, freezing her entire body, and she didn't feel like she could move or even breathe. This planet and these people who had appeared to treat her so well, were a nest of vipers. She should have landed in Yen-lo-wang and come into Oriente firing. It would have been better. So much better than trusting anyone. Ever.

  She fought to make her jaw move. Her teeth grated, and it sounded like her mouth was full of gravel.

  "Where's Bell?" she finally managed to say.

  "Major Casson will take you to him." Jessica paused, then seemed struck by a new idea. "Tomorrow," she said. "It would probably be beneficial for both of you to have a day alone with your thoughts. That will be all for today."

  Danai's thoughts were the last thing she wanted keeping her company, but she didn't seem to have a choice.

  She didn't want to be alone, and she didn't want to talk to anyone. Words had gotten her nowhere. Words were toxic.

  Zi-jin Cheng, Sian

  Capellan Confederation

  Erde had enough experience to know that the message with her name on it should not be opened in public. Casual letters were not generally sent via command circuits in diplomatic pouches. This was of some significance.

  She hoped it was business. Danai had been through enough personal issues to last her for a good long time. With any luck, it was a note asking for some urgent advice on matters of diplomacy.

  It was not.

  It was a brief, handwritten note, not even a dozen words. But they were enough to tear at Erde's heart.

  Great-aunt Erde,

  I know who my father is. Did you?

  Danai

  Daoshen. Daoshen had done it again. How could Naomi, her beloved older sister, produce such a vile offspring?

  Sun-Tzu Liao's genes must be powerful, she thought, to so overwhelm anything her sister contributed to that child.

  He must have told her. Who else would know? The secret had been closely guarded for decades—Daoshen didn't even know that Erde knew, though he had to suspect. They had tried to keep Naomi and Erde separate in the months before Danai was born, the better to set up the secret right from the start. But Erde had been involved in court intrigue for too long, she was too good at noticing inconsistencies and picking up on dropped pieces of information to be kept in the dark forever. She'd known the secret since Danai's first year of life, and she had yet to determine the right way of breaking the news to Danai. She had worried that if she delayed too long, Daoshen would beat her to the revelation, and now it had happened.

  The timing seemed particularly cruel. Danai was suffering from too many burdens to have another one added, and Daoshen hadn't even had the grace to tell her while she was still on Sian. where she was still within the reach of Erde's consolation. He had told her when she was alone, isolated. When she would have to deal with the knowledge herself.

  Which was, she knew immediately, the whole purpose. Daoshen was running Danai through the gauntlet while, in his own twisted way, trying to bind her closer to him. If she made it through all this with her head held high, she would emerge as more of a Liao than she ever had been. She would be on the path to becoming the daughter Daoshen envisioned.

  But Danai was not just a Liao, though Erde appreciated that side of her every time she watched holovid coverage of Danai's adventures on Solaris VII. She was also a Centrella. And she deserved more than Daoshen gave her. She deserved someone who could show her that a parent and a sovereign did not have to behave as Daoshen did. That a ruler could increase the security and power of a nation—as Daoshen certainly had—and still be considered a failure. Erde had her own bits and pieces of information that she could use, but she knew how to reveal them in a way that would build Danai up rather than tear her down. Danai needed to see that service to the state did not demand the complete destr
uction of her character. Quite the opposite, really.

  She had wanted to be back in the Magistracy long ago. But now, it seemed, she had yet another journey in front of her.

  23

  Amur, Oriente

  Oriente Protectorate

  11 April 3136

  Bell was being held, oddly enough, in the lower levels of Amur Palace. The dungeon. Oriente had never been through a feudal stage, and so the palace had never held a real dungeon, but apparently the building's architects thought the medieval allusion was appropriate. The walls of the corridor Danai had to pass through to reach the holding area were rough-hewn stone, and the maintenance staff even let moss grow on a few rocks for effect. They wanted anyone who walked this hall to know they were in considerable trouble.

  Of course. Danai was fairly certain the real might of the walls was hidden behind some fake stones. Any attempt at escape, or to smuggle a weapon, would trigger the sensors that were likely hidden throughout the masonry. Alarms would sound, gun barrels would emerge and all of a sudden the corridor would look decidedly modern.

  Danai hoped to avoid seeing that aspect of it. It helped that she had no desire to break Bell out.

  She was led through a series of sliding metal doors and placed on a metal stool in front of an exceedingly thick sheet of ferroglass. Even Yen-lo-wang, had Danai somehow managed to get it through the cramped corridors and low ceilings of the basement, would need a few chops to break through it. The small room on the other side looked smudged and blurry.

  A door opened on the other side, and for a moment Danai saw only darkness beyond it. Then Bell, wearing gray coveralls, sauntered into view. His central role in a brewing diplomatic incident seemed not to affect him. His hair was impeccable, his grin insolent. He was completely himself, which irritated Danai to no end.

  "I shouldn't have to remind you of this, but anything we say will be recorded," Danai said. A hidden set of microphones in the stone walls carried her words to Bell through an equally hidden set of speakers.

  "Really?" Bell said. "Good quality sound, do you think? Maybe I should sing something."

  "Bell . . ." Danai said.

  Bell sang.

  "One night on Laiaka,

  I took my baby for a drive,

  But I took the top down—

  'Fraid she didn't survive."

  "Bell!" Danai yelled. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

  "Okay, maybe that wasn't my best effort, but all things considered . . ."

  "A call girl?" Danai said. "A prostitute? You went into the restricted area after a prostitute? How stupid, how male can you be?"

  "What do you think?" Bell said, and the arrogance dropped out of his voice.

  "You don't want to ask me that," Danai said. "I could go on for hours about how stupid I think you could be."

  "I'm sure you could. But you think I'd go into the restricted area on a foreign planet after a prostitute?"

  Danai had another furious response ready to go, but she swallowed it. He was right. She'd been thinking about it for a day, and she had already concluded that he probably wasn't guilty. On Aldebaran she had thought he was a major pain in the ass, but he was also where he was supposed to be, every time. Every assignment she'd given him, he carried through until it was done. He could be annoying, but she had been forced to admit that he was not, in fact, that stupid.

  However, she wasn't willing to let go of her anger that easily.

  "I've seen you hit on me at exactly the wrong time. Twice. You're more than capable of thinking with your groin."

  "Did I break any laws hitting on you?"

  She sighed. "No."

  "And in all fairness, Sao-shao, I don't think there's been a moment since I've known you that might have been considered the right moment to hit on you. So you see my problem—I haven't had a lot to work with."

  He was right, and she resented that like hell. "This isn't about me," she snapped. "And I'm under no obligation to make myself available to your advances."

  "Of course," he said mildly. "I'm just pointing out that there's a big gulf between the bad judgment I've shown and the bad judgment I'm being accused of."

  "All right. You want me to believe you're innocent. Tell me what happened."

  "I wasn't going after a prostitute, for starters," he said, and then some of his customary insolence returned. "There are some things a man shouldn't have to pay for."

  "So what where you doing?"

  "My job," he said. "And I can speak freely about this, because they already know all of it anyway.

  "I was in a restaurant," he continued. "In the part of the restricted area we can go to in the daytime. It's a good place to be—DropShips loading and unloading all the time, people coming and going. You get a good feel for what's happening in the Protectorate, and even in the surrounding areas.

  "It was getting late, about an hour before I needed to be back in quarters. I met a woman. Yes, she was good- looking, and yes, that's why she first caught my eye, but I wouldn't have spent the last hour I had out with just anyone. No matter how cute she was." He put on his cockeyed grin. "Even if she was as cute as you."

  "Bell!"

  "Oops. Wrong time again?"

  Danai, in spite of everything, couldn't help but smile a little. "Yes," she said.

  "My mistake. Anyway, she had a badge on. Irian Technologies. A courier, but someone a little more important than a regular messenger. Someone who was going to meet with Philip Hughes and know what she was talking about, you know? So I thought it would be worth seeing if she'd been anywhere interesting lately.

  "She hadn't—she was just coming in from Irian. But she was friendly, I was charming and we talked a little shop. I said I'd been on Aldebaran, seen a little of the fighting last year—I didn't tell her, of course, that I'd done a little of the fighting there—and said I'd left the planet to get away from the chaos.

  "She told me it was a good thing I didn't flee outward. If I had hit Menkalinan or Kyrkbacken, I might have been right back in the middle of the chaos. But then she corrected herself. She said some machines were supposed to go there, but they went to Park Place instead.

  "I thought that was interesting. Something you should know. So I made my excuses and stood up to go. I reached for some bills to pay for the meal, but she waved me off. Said she was already charging it to Irian. I thanked her and left.

  "I walked out of the restaurant, went about twenty meters, when someone grabbed my arm. A big guy in a suit, with sunglasses. He asked me if I was forgetting something, I said no. He told me I hadn't paid for my food, so I told him the nice young lady I was sitting with was taking care of the bill, and he responded that the nice young lady had just skipped out herself. I told him

  I was sorry about the confusion and I'd be happy to pay, so we went back to the place.

  "I was at the front of the restaurant, getting out some cash, when the woman I'd been eating with ran up. And let me just say that the way she was running drew the attention of every nearby male with a pulse. She was full of apologies—to me, to the security guy who'd grabbed me, to the maitre d', to me again for good measure—and that went on for a while. She'd forgotten to sign for the dinner, she said, so the maitre d' produced a noteputer, she signed her name, and everything was taken care of and I still had all my cash.

  "Trouble was, I had ten minutes to get back out of the restricted area and a seven-minute walk ahead of me. I needed to move. So I pried myself away from the woman—she was still apologizing—and started to jog off.

  "I was making good time, getting across all the streets, and coming close to the DropPort. I was feeling good about the progress I'd made, so I slowed to a walk. Then a car pulls in front of me, the passenger door opens and damned if it's not the woman from the restaurant climbing out. And she's still apologizing. She's sorry she didn't pay, sorry she followed me, sorry she's keeping me from going where I need to be. She just wanted to see me one more time, to maybe make another date. Well, she was
pretty cute, but the tailing me for a few blocks and jumping out at me set off an alarm or two, so I said no thanks. But she kept grabbing me, making it tough to get away.

  "I finally said that I really had to go, and I hated to do what I was about to do, but I had to do it. I gave her a gentle shove so I could get away.

  "Turned out I didn't shove her hard enough. She had enough balance and presence of mind to trip me. Trip me! And while I was stumbling, she gave me a shove, right into the front seat of the car, and she tried to close the door.

  "I wasn't having any of that. I stuck my leg out, and she closed the door on it. I've got the bruise to prove it." He rolled up a leg of his coverall, revealing a straight black-and-blue mark across the back of his calf.

  "I struggled out, pushing the door all the way open and tried to step away, but she tripped me again. This time I went down on the ferrocrete. I heard her footsteps behind me as I fell, so I turned, lying with my back on the street, to fend her off.

  "She fell on me, but it wasn't an attack. Her hands were all over, rubbing and her lips pressed right into me. I was surprised. And I've gotta say, it wasn't entirely unpleasant. But I didn't forget what I was supposed to be doing, so I pushed her off.

  "She didn't resist much. She rolled off me, then sat down. I noticed she had some cash in her hand, and I guessed she'd taken it from me while she'd been on me. But I didn't care. She could have it.

  "I started to get up when some hands grabbed my shoulder, pushing me back down. There were a couple of MPs behind me, telling me that the woman sitting next to me with my cash in her hand was a known prostitute and that I was in a restricted area and I was under arrest. And here I am."

  Danai sat silently for a minute, trying to absorb Bell's story. He sat still, arms folded, waiting.

  "You expect me to believe that?" she finally said.

  "Yes," he said. "For one of two reasons. Either you know I'm essentially honest, or you think I'm too dumb to invent a story that convoluted. You can pick your reason, but yes, I think you should believe me."